Pulled From Festival, Anti-Vaccination Film Will Run in Theater

A documentary about the widely discredited link between autism and vaccines, which was pulled from the Tribeca Film Festival, will now be released in a New York City theater on Friday, its distributors have said.

The film, “Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe,” was removed from the Tribeca program last week after the festival’s co-founder Robert De Niro — who at first supported its screening — reversed course, saying the documentary would not contribute to a positive discussion about medical and public health issues.

The film’s distributor, Cinema Libre Studio, a small Burbank, Calif., company, said the film’s message had been misconstrued. Cinema Libre said that after the film’s premiere at the Angelika Film Center on Friday, the company was planning a wider release in other cities.

Philippe Diaz, chairman of Cinema Libre, said in a telephone interview on Wednesday that his company had decided to rush the film to theaters to counter the impression that it or its filmmaker was anti-vaccine. “Nobody in their normal mind today could be anti-vaccine. That’s absurd,” he said. Instead, Mr. Diaz said, the film’s backers hope to provide an outlet to discuss its claims that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention covered up information about autism research, accusations they say have been brought by a former center employee, William Thompson.

“Our main goal is to bring William Thompson to Congress, to testify” and spur further investigation, Mr. Diaz said. (A Republican Congressman from Florida, Bill Posey, appears in the film and is sympathetic to the anti-vaccine cause.)

But along with other health organizations, the C.D.C. has already stated unequivocally that “vaccines do not cause autism” and has made data from some of its research, which Mr. Thompson contested, public and available for peer review.

When the Tribeca Film Festival, which begins on April 13, initially added the film to its schedule, doctors and public health professionals denounced the screening, calling it damaging and an irresponsible use of a respected festival’s platform.

The director and co-writer of “Vaxxed” is Andrew Wakefield, an author of a small 1998 study about autism and vaccination that was published in the British medical journal The Lancet and then retracted in 2010. The study has been widely and frequently debunked.

Mr. Wakefield has also had his medical license revoked over ethics violations and his failure to disclose financial conflicts of interest. But he has become a prominent figure in the anti-vaccination movement, which has led to an increase in outbreaks of preventable diseases like measles.

A statement on Cinema Libre’s website, posted late Tuesday, said the company had been involved with “Vaxxed” since fall 2015, and a spokeswoman said that it had originally planned to release the film in June. But the new release date, first reported by Variety, was quickly put into effect after the film was pulled from the Tribeca slate over the weekend.

Mr. Diaz said that in working on “Vaxxed” — which was brought to Cinema Libre by Del Bigtree, a producer and writer of the film who also appears in it — his company asked to see the filmmakers’ research, although he acknowledged that “none of us are scientists.”

“We cannot be convinced by: Is it true or not true?” Mr. Diaz said. “There are also tons of studies that show there is no link” between autism and vaccines. Ultimately, the idea of a government cover-up seemed a convincingly meaty topic for a film, Mr. Diaz said. It was his idea to submit it to Tribeca, and he did so through official channels, he said, adding that Mr. De Niro and his wife, Grace Hightower De Niro, who have an autistic son, also screened it.

“They had, like, months to study the movie,” Mr. Diaz said, referring to festival programmers. “They told us from very early on that it was accepted.” It was only after its place in the lineup was made public and drew negative attention, despite Mr. De Niro’s support, that the festival leadership rescinded its screening, partly because, Mr. Diaz said, its sponsors were unhappy.

A festival spokeswoman said there was no further comment, beyond the festival’s initial reason for canceling the movie, which was articulated by Mr. De Niro.

Mr. Diaz and others involved with “Vaxxed” have called the festival’s decision to remove it censorship. (A Change.org petition to return it to the program has more than 30,000 supporters.)

But David Wilson, a founder of the True/False Film Fest, a respected annual documentary showcase in Missouri, said censorship was an off-the-mark charge, when the film still had many other outlets. (It will have seven screenings per day at the Angelika, versus the sole showing that was planned at Tribeca.)

”Censorship is denying a voice,” Mr. Wilson said. “That film has been denied a platform, but it certainly hasn’t been denied a voice.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page C3 of the New York edition with the headline: Cut From Festival, Vaccination Film Opens Early. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe